Crayon Sky Music

When I moved to California in 2003 I started working with guitars everyday. My opinions on a lot of guitars started to be based on experience and not word of mouth. During this time every new Epiphone Les Paul I seemed to grab felt very good. Coincidentally this was the year that Epiphone Les Paul guitars became “Hand Crafted In China” and not “Made In Korea”.

My friend Hal is a 40 something year old guitar player from northern CA, the typical Saturday morning rock guitar player. He seemed to be doing fine judging by his Lexus SUV, but having a real life (Wife) made getting a Gibson something of a leap for him.

Another friend happened to be selling a Gibson Les Paul Classic and the price was very good. Hal was really debating making the Jump. The final test was an AB comparison between his guitar and the Gibson. Hal had never told us he had an Epiphone Les Paul Standard Honey Burst until he came to the store to AB it with the Gibson. My work-mate and I also compared the guitars.

As we kept playing we started to look for flaws on the used Gibson because it was nowhere close to the sound and performance of the Hal’s Epiphone. Hal decided to finally tell us about a modification he had done to his guitar, the Jimmy Page Mod plus a set of Gibson Pickups. This basically gives every possible combination of pickup settings that the electronics of the guitar allows.

We were in awe of how he would just name a Zeppelin song, pull or push a couple of knobs and just nail the sound. We could have tried to convince Hal to finally get a Gibson Les Paul but I was the first one to admit that if it was me I would not change it.

1977 LEFTY Ibanez Custom Gibson Les Paul copy Bassman Head